The present invention relates generally to field of digital content conversion, and particularly to systems for verifying quality of such conversions in an automated fashion.
Many different formats, systems and media have been used and are currently used for creating and delivering digital content to audiences. Historically, these included film that was used to capture scenes, with segments of film being exposed, developed, processed, and post-processed to render the desired content, typically movies. Increasingly, digital media are used for this purpose. Such media has included video tape, direct digital capture technologies, and so forth. Where legacy libraries exist, such as on original film, these can be digitized and converted to forms that can be electronically stored, transmitted, and manipulated.
It is common to convert such digital content from one form or version to another. For example, studios and content providers may store only one or a handful of versions of a particular movie, television show, presentation, or other content, while distributers, playback devices and systems may require or function best with other versions. By way of example, a traditional film media utilizes a nominal frame rate of 24 frames/sec, while many products may be delivered at a different frame rates, such as a nominal 30 frames/sec, or in some regions 25 frames/sec. Thus, a conversion of the original version to the desired version is needed. Such conversions may also change the size of the frames, certain portions of the content, add too or extract segments to the content, and so forth. These conversions may be performed in automated or semi-automated systems, and often require some quality control to verify that the conversion was accurate, that errors did not occur in conversion of frame rates, sizes, content, and so forth. Many such errors may arise, it is useful to verify the conversion prior to delivery to audiences and distributors.
Historically, however, such quality control has been spotty. That is, many aspects of the quality control are manually very demanding, requiring hours or days for a human operator to check aspects of the conversion, content, synchronization, and so forth. Even where automated systems have been developed, these typically require very substantial human interaction. As a result, the quality control is either not fully performed, is expensive, and can result in a “false pass”, that is, an indication that the quality is as desired, when in reality it is not. While attempts have been made to improve such quality control, they have not alleviated the costly and time-consuming manual requirement, or even particularly improved quality control results.
There is a need, therefore, for improved techniques for verification of quality in digital content conversion. There is a particular need for processes that can effectively allow for automated conversion with automated quality control and little or no manual intervention.